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Florida recount: Democrats Nelson, Fried make slight gains in St. Lucie County

Paul Ivice, Special to TCPalm
Published 6:07 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2018

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With voting recounts in full swing, you might be worried that your ballot got lost in the action of it all. Here's how you can check to see if your vote was counted. GINNY BEAGAN/TCPALM
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With observers from both parties looking over their shoulders, Republican Kenneth Nail and Democrat Mary Ann McBee quickly look through ballots separated from the rest because the machine count could not determine a vote for Agriculture Commissioner.(Photo: PAUL IVICE/SPECIAL TO TCPALM)Buy Photo

FORT PIERCE — If Democratic candidates Bill Nelson and Nicole “Nikki’ Fried were hoping for any significant help from St. Lucie County in the manual recount conducted Friday, they are bound to be disappointed.

Four teams of volunteers, each with one Democrat and one Republican plus other observers hovering over their shoulders, looked through 1,180 ballots in the morning and 3,476 in the afternoon. They were looking for any evidence of a countable vote among those that machine counters spat out as an under-vote or over-vote during the machine recount earlier in the week of all 125,238 ballots cast.

It took the volunteers less time to sort through more than three times as many ballots in search of countable vote for agriculture commissioner, and that produced even fewer results.

Fried added 11 votes, and Republican Matt Caldwell received five.

That meant final totals of 62,549 for Fried and 59,228 for Caldwell in St. Lucie.

Though the Democrats outpolled their Republican counterparts in both races in St. Lucie County, Republicans were pleased with the results because among registered voters, Democrats outnumber Republicans 40 percent to 32 percent. Also, high turnouts such as the 61.7 percent for this election, a record for midterms, typically favor Democrats.

With dozens of volunteers and attorneys representing both parties, plus elections staff, the canvassing board and others, there were nearly 100 people in the large room at the Supervisor of Elections Office.

Gertrude Walker, who was first appointed supervisor of elections in 1980 and has been returned to office by voters nine times since, said, “This is the first time this room has really been used to its full capacity.”

Cathy Townsend, the County Commission’s representative on the canvassing board, said, “There’s never been this much participating and activity in an election.”